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Comment The answer is local control (Home assistant) (Score 1) 155

Cloud services are okay as a bonus/optional thing. But the key feature is local control. I have 250 smart devices, all of them are locally integrated via home assistant If the manufacturers go out of business or if the internet is offline nothing changes for me. I use home assistant for local integration. I don't see it going mainstream but for those with a tech background it's amazingly powerful. 150 of my devices are high end lutron ra3 switches/keypads. Prior to getting them, I would have to turn off 100 light switches every night. Huge pain. I've automated everything. shades, interior lighting, exterior lighting, pool lights, ceiling fans, whole house fan, pool slides, pool features, etc, etc Expensive and time consuming but when done well it's awesome result.

Comment Walled garden is why I would never use an iPhone (Score 2) 124

The app store and iPhone being locked down is a bad model for the industry wrt innovation. If on the PC, Linux or Windows had a similar model, it would be a disaster.

PC ecosystem has flourished because it everyone is able to innovate in that space. If it was one company trying to dominate it all, it would be bad for the industry.

To me, there is nothing else more important and I will never use an Apple product because of this. Even if they were free.

Any concerns with Android I've seen such as privacy, are secondary in my view as you have the freedom to use other devices, apps, etc.

Comment It doesn't work as well as people think it will... (Score 1) 112

Publishing is one thing, but if they can offer above or below the posted range during negotiations then the law has no teeth. And how wide can the range be?

As I hiring manager that's dealt with this -- Colorado already has a similar law -- it's not as useful as people think it is. Hiring Managers create a job posting for a particular level. At that level, you show the pay band. It should be real data for employees at the level. This part is somewhat useful information. Albeit, stock grants != salary range. However, the big gap in utility with this law is that when you interview candidates, you might decide they aren't a match for the level you created the job posting under. So you can create a new job posting with a lower level or high level, and offer the candidate the alternative posting. The salary range for which the candidate applied is irrelevant under the other posting. I've hired many employees using the concept of a funnel req. A one or two reqs that describe the position, we assess level, then redirect to a more specific posting that might not be advertised or advertised as broadly.

Comment Re:This kind of nannying doesn't help anything. (Score 3, Interesting) 303

There is a lot more range anxiety with ICE than EV. With ICE you have to think about whether you need gas during your daily commute. With EV you start the day charged. I save around 15/minutes a week or 15*52=780 minutes or 13 hours a year avoid a filling up with gas for my commute. Charging while getting dinner on a vacation drive might negate some of those savings, but since I would eat dinner anyways I don't think it reduces them by much.

Comment Re:Somethig wrong with that (Score 2) 254

Look at the % of females graduating at top colleges with computer science degrees, it's small %. At top schools it's only 14%. A 32% target is only possible if they hire unqualified candidates or the % is balanced by non-tech positions (e.g.: HR).

Or, are you sexist and believe that the 14% of women entering college are proportionally superior to 86% of the males?

Until more women become interested in tech careers expecting to see significant changes in hiring isn't going to happen (other than by failing or soon to be failing companies).

Comment A great alternative to GameSpy is Voobly (Score -1, Flamebait) 145

I've been using Voobly.com for a few games that used to by hosted on GameSpy. In many cases, they've added some excellent third party patches, such as the AoE I HD fan patch @ http://www.voobly.com/pages/vi... -- features include: HD resolution support, multi-mon, new map sizes, new map types (all free). Their AoE II support is 2nd to none, adding features like spectator mode (supporting over 100 spectators).

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